I'm a self confessed nettle pusher. I want everyone to be as addicted to them as I am. For some reason that's not the case - people can't be bothered, are a little scared of the sting, or trepidatious about wild plants.

So when I put a shout out on a local Facebook gardening group that I run, people had no problem sharing nettles from their farms, where they'd rather dig them out and be done with them all together. As much as I try to persuade people to eat the weed, they're not overly keen. And so I end up with boxes of it, spikey and pungently green, to dry and cook with whilst fresh.

The woman I collect them from works in mental health. It's a particularly stressful job at this time. We talk about being grounded in nature, and coming into the body through being with plants and animals. Her daughter has a chronic illness and they moved to the country to care for her. We talk about the book 'The Body Keeps the Score' and the importance of educating people about how their minds work, and biochemistry. I think to myself about how much I want to bring people to plants, because plants bring me into my body.

Nettles appear just when you need them most, usually when you're suffering from hellish hayfever. They're anti-inflammatory so are said to reduce the symptoms of hayfever (inflamed sinuses and so on) and it's also a natural antihistimine. It always makes me marvel that a plant will grow at exactly the time you need it most. Yet we tend to ignore nature more than we should. It's like it's tapping us on the shoulder and we're going 'oh yeah whatevs', when really we should be listening.

I was reading the other day that a guy in the UK swears by touching nettles and intentionally stinging himself early in the season which helped entirely get rid of his hayfever. There's a lot to be said for these stories of medicinal plants. Whilst there hasn't always been the 'scientific' research needed to make these plants more 'popular' and accepted, loads of stories like this are valid, and worth listening to. At the very least, it's full of iron and other vitamins and minerals, so why shouldn't we be adding it to our food, rather than buying plastic wrapped greens at the supermarket?

And I adore adding nettle to my food. Dried or fresh, it's a fantastic green to add nutrients to all kinds of things, like these inspired wontons with tofu, garlic leaves, shitake mushrooms and lots of nettles. It's simply a matter of blending the ingredients with a splash of tamari and maybe some ginger, and wrapping them in wonton wrappers, steaming and perhaps frying if you'd like a crispy bottom.

Tonight's dinner is roast fennel, garden swedes, asparagus, and layers of other plant goodness.

One roasts in minutes - fifteen for the swedes, and potatoes for another fifteen, add the fennel for fifteen, then the asparagus, nettles, the last of last year's sun dried tomatoes, finely chopped garlic leaves, salt and pepper, and bake until beautifully tasty and caramelised. Add a dollop of coconut yoghurt or vegan fetta, some finely chopped fennel fronds, parsley, calendula.

It's a medicinal plant feast that doesn't taste like medicine at all.

This is how I like to deepen my relationship with herbs, through stories, and food, and community.

And so I continue to push nettles, and hope that people learn to live with their sting.

With Love,

^{The Herbal Hive Community}

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